Willowmist was lazy.

Ponies would look uncomfortable when she said it. “You’re not… lazy,” they’d say, in that slow, hesitant way that Willow knows is quick, emotional rationalisation. “You have executive dysfunction. It’s okay to not spend every moment being productive. There’s no time limit.

This was, of course, untrue.

Ponies try not to think about the Time Limit, but it is always there.

So, even though Willowmist was lazy, she had an excuse that ponies would make for her. And it is with shame that she let them.

Past tense, past tense. Everything fades away into that hazy cloud of memories on memories. All you touch and all you see. That’s how the song went, the one Willowmist listened to on humid summer mornings before the sun rose.

She was relieved when the world ended.

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And then-- she wakes up.

She blinks, but her vision does not become clearer. It’s like a dream where the grey haze creeps in from the edges and you know you’re looking at something but the mind just can’t conjure it.

Why can’t she make sense out of the shapes and colours? Why does it look like she’s in a bathtub one moment and an impossibly soft bed the next? It feels like she’s… floating.

She tries to blink again, shake her head, but nothing happens. She can’t feel herself.

She can’t see.

She has no eyes to open.

The rush of dread and shock is muted. Almost… hypothetical. Why wasn’t her stomach dropping out of her chest? Why had her legs not locked themselves in place? The answer comes smoothly to the forefront. I don’t have a body any more.

Clearly, Willowmist’s time was up.

That’s… her name. But… it isn’t. It had been. Willowmist had been her name.

And now, she doesn’t have the parts Willowmist had that made her the way that she was.

The thoughts come easily. If this was death, it wasn’t that bad so far. She tries not to think about how much time she has before the novelty wears off.

So, to distract herself, she decides to come up with a new name.

But the thoughts don’t come easily any more.

What is she, now?

I am a pony, she thinks, and that still seems to be true. Even without the hooves and horn, a unicorn still described something about her, something indefinable except by its own name. Her coat is… grey. Grey and soft and fuzzy. With bright, blue-purple eyes, and a mane of deep, almost purple black.

But is she just a pony? No. It’s with a certain sense of disbelief that the identity of a pony like everyone else slips back into the past tense with everything else. She is not just a pony. She’s also… a lion.

Yes. Her tail is long and elegant, almost like that of a kirin, though the tuft of hair is a little smaller, more lionlike. Her teeth are sharp. She doesn’t have hooves, but rather paws, like she always wanted, though nopony had ever known about that secret desire of Willowmist’s. There are sharp claws hidden behind the softness. She can… feel them.

In fact, she can feel everything.

The lion-pony flexes and takes a sharp breath in-- remembering how to do it, remembering how it feels to have lungs and a horn and a tongue. A stomach, a beating heart.

The sensations threaten to overwhelm her.

It is several long minutes before she tries to open her eyes.

She is greeted with only darkness.

What is her name?

“Leia,” she says aloud, and her voice is exactly what she imagined: soft and deep and careful.

And that’s when her paws touch carpet.

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Willowmist was crying.

Listen:

She didn’t know how to get out. It is what they all recognised. It’s what they all pitied. That’s all pity is: the recognition that someone is a prisoner, a victim, a lost soul that just didn’t find what they needed to find. Things wouldn’t change. That’s what everypony knew, the secret that wasn’t a secret, the unspoken excuse given to every slacker and every overworker, the pity that follows them everywhere, the knowledge that things don’t really change until they’re over.

The time limit was all some ponies had.

“I was right, I was right,” the soft blue-purple unicorn sobbed, and out of the corner of her eye she saw herself in the reflection of another mirror’s reflection: a wild smile on her face, a lump in her throat blocking her laughter from getting out, and her eyes shining with grief and glee.

When the world ended, Willowmist was one of the few ponies who knew exactly why, and exactly who was responsible. Thunder cracked the sky, and made the little mare shiver, the pounding deluge music to her ears, her whole body relaxing as the lightning flashed behind her curtains, behind her eyelids, and the roll of thunder that followed shook the house like an earthquake.

Willowmist’s sobbing turns to giggling, and she pulls her phone up to her face in shaky magic, blinking the tears from her eyes.

Goodbyes had already been said, emotions already buried, the inevitable already sunk in. Those who knew her heart were still sending messages, and she let them wash over her one last time, the words passing like the rain outside, each expression of love sending a shock through her like lightning of her own, and her horn glows brighter, interfacing with the group chat for the last time. The house shakes again, the sound of the wind so loud that it almost drowns out the thunder that suddenly seems to far away.

Her message was short.

Looks like it made it here quick. =P Thank Luna I don’t have to survive this shit. Peace, everypony.

And then Willowmist bit down on the crystal, and her head exploded.

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Leia is rooted in place, feeling the soft, deep carpet, her tail twitching and eyes squeezed shut. Why is it here? Where the fuck is she?

It seems less and less like death by the moment. She had imagined a body and now has it. Imagined a name and it’s hers. Imagined stepping on a soft, deep carpet, like the one her grandmother had in the basement, with her new paws-- and suddenly it was real, gravity existed again, there was an up and down.

She rolls her shoulders, feeling her new muscles, her new weight. Willowmist had been a small, slight little mare. Leia is strong. She’s… big.

What would she see when she opened her eyes?

Nothing, part of her says, without delay. Even if I see something, it will be something I created in my mind. There is nothing here. There is no here. There is no me. That’s in the past.

But that answer just… isn’t good enough.

Whatever I want, is the next thought. It tracks with everything so far, and her heart beats faster. Whatever I want. It’s… literally everything she ever dreamed. Everything everything everything made for her, made from her, every desire and idea given life in this strange sort of death where, for the very first time, there is a now.

“The now,” she murmurs, softly, feeling the words leave her throat. Whatever Leia wants-- *now*. Her lion-pony body trembles. Her claws, she realises, are digging into the carpet. Tears leak from her eyes in much the way they did from Willowmist’s.

It is the third thoughts that make her breathe deeply, and for the first time, do something Willowmist never could, never managed to a single time in her entire, fleeing life:

Focus.

Her body slowly relaxes, tail swishing slowly, as Leia turns the former two options over in her head. Something in her knew that this dilemma mattered. Eventually, would she have to choose one or the other?

No, say her third thoughts. I know what I really want.

“Collaborators,” Leia murmurs.

And she opens her eyes, smiling with hope.

Her friends smile back at her-- all shapes and sizes, ponies and dragons and strange creatures like her, some using the bodies of their dead selves, others different but as recognisable as anything, the world around them luminous and bright, their imaginations bleeding into each other as her carpet spread out into the room that had appeared, and a landscape slid into place behind a glass wall to their left.

All at once, they start laughing, relief and wonder and a strange sort of sadness as the anxieties of living are cast away and everything before the end of the world becomes well and truly in the past, leaving only the now.

And Leia, towering over all but the dragon standing on its hindlegs:

“I told you that was how we were all gonna die.”